Bishop Morlino: no emergency contraception for rape victims

I commented on this post on a Catholic blog [via Dane101]. Over the last week it had become a lively discussion until today when the priests took their ball and went home.

For my assertion that a rape-induced pregnancy should be a woman’s prerogative to abort, especially at a stage of development where a zygote is months away from the capacity to even feel pain, I was accused of “promoting death” as a “kill-all-the-babies-[relativist].” This wasn’t surprising, but I would have preferred that they stuck to attacking my argument instead of attacking me personally.

Once he started making it about me rather than my argument, I began asking Fr Renzo di Lorenzo: if God is required for moral behavior, then in the absence of God, would you rape, maim, and kill? Again and again he ignored it, preferring instead to speak in parables and insist that I don’t / won’t / can’t see. By the time the thread was closed he had created a caricature of me which was in equal measure entertaining and bizarre.

None of these 7 things are true.

These seven myths have worked their way into “common knowledge,” but none of them are supported by evidence:

• People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day.
• We use only 10% of our brains.
• Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
• Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser.
• Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight.
• Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy.
• Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals.

I am not afraid. Are you?

I believe that the most obvious way to fight terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. The erosion of our civil liberties in the name of an eternal War on Terror is reprehensible, cowardly, and un-American.

If the U.S. is not actually a nation of cowards, it is certainly being misrepresented as such by our government.

I just sent this to my Congressional representatives. You can too.

I am not afraid of terrorism, and I want you to stop being afraid on my behalf. Please start scaling back the official government war on terror. Please replace it with a smaller, more focused anti-terrorist police effort in keeping with the rule of law. Please stop overreacting. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all terrorist acts. I am not afraid.

what waterboarding feels like

Here’s a personal account of waterboarding from someone who did it to himself to see what all the fuss was about.

Excerpt:

I’ll put it this way. If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I’d take the fingers, no question.

It’s horrible, terrible, inhuman torture. I can hardly imagine worse. I’d prefer permanent damage and disability to experiencing it again. I’d give up anything, say anything, do anything.

The Spanish Inquisition knew this. It was one of their favorite methods.

You and I are paying with our taxes for this to happen to human beings.

This is currently happening to those designated as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay and at secret prisons run by the CIA around the world whose existence was confirmed by Bush in September 2006.

You are an “enemy combatant” if the Executive branch of our United States says you are. The Military Commisions Act of 2006 removes from “enemy combatants” the right of habeas corpus, meaning that you are not allowed to know the “evidence” against you, you are not afforded a speedy trial, and other fundamental liberties that were previously guaranteed to American citizens by the Constitution.

You can be named an “enemy combatant” tomorrow if that serves the Executive. So could I. If this law is not reversed, it will be used for suppression of dissent.